


Acceptance for Beginners

by IceSword46



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Gen, I don't know when exactly this takes place tbh, Season 4 didn't deserve the Britta/Troy that Seasons 1-3 worked to build up, Troy/Abed is alluded to, Troy/Britta is in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26347111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceSword46/pseuds/IceSword46
Summary: Britta finds Abed at his grave.
Relationships: Abed Nadir & Britta Perry, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Britta Perry
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Acceptance for Beginners

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own these characters, I just like to write them sometimes.

Britta has been watching Abed more since Troy left. It's not that she's _worried_ , she just sits next to him so it's easy to see when his hands are more fidgety in his lap, or when he scratches a little more insistently at his palms. Some days she'll try and shoot Jeff a look and one of them will work a little harder to engage Abed in whatever they're doing that day. Other days she'll just bump her foot or knee against his and Abed will give her a small half-smile. Some days it works, some days it doesn't and she'll Annie's eyes be extra big and sad looking and yes, okay, she's worried.

It's kind of hard not to be worried, though, when she was there to watch Abed fall into fake-real lava rather than fully process the fact that Troy was leaving. And, like, she's pretty _proud_ for coming up with the cloning idea to help him cope. And, yes, she understands that it's not the _best_ but she was working on the fly and Troy was yelling and she had just wanted to do something to help. So now there's a Clone!Abed and a Clone!Troy out there in the world and she's not fully sure how it'll work out but most days it seems like the answer is: okay enough. 

On Abed's quieter days she think she's trying too hard to fill even a sliver of the Troy-shaped missing piece in Abed's heart but she doesn't see him as regularly as Annie does to know how he is around the apartment that Britta knows is one person quieter than Abed and Annie are used to. Britta asked Annie about it one day as they were filling up their water bottles before their daily meeting and Annie affirmed that some days he doesn't leave the Dreamatorium after they get home until after Annie goes to bed, or that he doesn't talk as much during movies. 

Shirley's noticed it, too. Britta has picked up on the fact that once a week or so she'll bring in an extra sandwich from the shop, saying that it got toasted a little too long or it had the wrong type of cheese on it for the customer. It just so happens that it's always a type of sandwich that Abed will eat and Britta will see Shirley eyeing Abed to make sure he snacks on it. "We've never been that close but it's at least some way I can help," she tells Britta and Annie during one trip to the bathroom. Annie makes a small noise and pulls Shirley in for a hug and Shirley and Britta share a look as Shirley rests her head on Annie's shoulder.

Britta knows she's focusing on the negative and that Abed has good days where he actively engages with everyone and banters with Jeff and makes _Inspector Spacetime_ references without seeming upset. There's also the just okay days where he quietly and efficiently helps with the task at hand and listens to Britta talk about her latest climate change concerns. Annie's told her there are perfectly fine nights at the apartment where he'll make them dinner or they'll debate the lasting impact of 80's romantic movies.

Her worrying comes to a head when she sees Abed slip out of the study room quickly and quietly the moment they're done for the day. She goes to get Jeff's attention but he's deep in conversation with Shirley so she follows after Abed alone. Abed walks with purpose, with his head down and his backpack pulled tight against him. He pulls open a nondescript looking door and vanishes down a flight of stairs. Britta realizes where she's headed the moment she takes the first step. She sees Abed sitting on a still knocked-over shelving unit, kicking his dangling legs gently back and forth over the area where he laid motionless on the ground a few months earlier. "Hi, Britta," he says, not looking in her direction.

"Hi, Abed," she replies back, uncertain if she should say more. She sets her bag down on the ground and sits down on a box. "Come here often?" She kind of tries to use it as its innate joke, but also as a general question.

Abed gives her a flat look and she fights back a wince. "Sometimes," Abed eventually says. He looks down at the ground, and Britta thinks he may say more but he goes silent again.

Britta wrestles with how to word her next question tactfully but eventually just gives up and asks, "why?"

Abed takes a breath, as though he's steeling himself, before speaking. "The apartment still feels like him. His chair. His mug. They're still there even though he isn't. My chair and my mug are there, too, even though I'm not the same person I was before he left and my chair feels different now." He's tugging at his sleeves of his cardigan. Britta wonders if he notices that he's doing it. She almost comments on it but bites her tongue, not wanting to cut off Abed's train of thought.

"I haven't figured out how to be this new version of Me, yet. The Me that's supposed to be okay that my best friend is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while I'm sitting in a basement. The Me that doesn't have a Constable Reggie anymore. Annie tries her best but her accent work is still pretty bad."

"Down here it feels like I can remember the old Me better. I can visualize the version of me that was still a student who was making friends in a Spanish study group or playing paintball or had two roommates. But maybe that's making it harder for me to settle into the Clone!Me. Maybe if I stopped trying so hard to remember the old me, I would feel more connected to Clone!Troy." 

"Maybe I 'britta-d' the cloning process," Britta offers weakly. "If it had gone more smoothly maybe you'd be feeling different."

"No," Abed says. "You did your best given the situation. It's just taking longer for the bugs to work themselves out than I anticipated."

She smiles to herself and then, since he didn't take the out she gave she him, she tells him, "There's no 'right amount of time' for dealing with change, Abed. We can do our best to adjust to it, and maybe that means cloning or maybe it means too much pot, but it still takes time. You're still going to have days where the clone hardware goes on the fritz or you're still sad even when you're, like, a perfect level of baked." Abed raises his brows at her and she gives him a sheepish shrug. 

"You're right, though," Abed admits. "I know, looking back, that the lava wasn't real. And I'm not proud of trying to make Troy keep playing. That doesn't allow for plot progression. I was scared."

"None of us wanted to see him leave, Abed," Britta says gently.

"None of you tried to make him stay," Abed shoots back. Britta thinks that it's a dig at the group before she sees how Abed isn't looking at her but downward, head turned away from her. She realizes it's Abed chastising himself.

"I wanted to," she admits and Abed turns sharply to face her. "Don't act so surprised. I'm terrified for him, Abed. Troy has one week of "sailing experience" - she makes air quotes around the words for good measure - "from like, three years ago during our second semester, and it ended up with Pierce getting knocked overboard." Abed smiles and Britta counts that as a small, if unexpected, win.

"I knew things would be different after he left. I knew that it would inevitably be good character development for the both of us, growing as individuals when so much of our story had been growing with each other," Abed's voice starts to waver and he looks down at the ground. "But it's really fucking _hard_."

Britta wishes she were sitting next to him, to be able to hold his hand or hug him or something, but she also worries that might over-stimulate him so instead she squeezes her own hands together. Abed takes a deep breath and Britta sees how tightly his hands grip the edge of the shelf.

"I miss him, too," Britta says. She hasn't really admitted how much she misses Troy and she finds sudden tears stinging her eyes. She swipes them away. 

"He loved you," Abed asks looking at her. "A lot. Like, he wouldn't shut up about you sometimes," there's a smile tugging at Abed's lips, as though remembering. Britta wants to know what memories are flashing through Abed's mind.

"I loved him, too," Britta replies. "I don't know if it was a 'we're going to get married' type of love but it was just nice to feel like...," she fumbles. "To feel like I didn't have to put on some persona for him. He didn't make me feel dumb when I didn't know things or for what I find funny. He listened when I talked about women's rights and he would actually ask follow up questions. He also helped me realize I needed to work on making my views more intersectional. He told me about how he had different rules on how to treat authority figures than his white friends when he was growing up. How he still does."

 _I told him the real reason I don't get along with my parents, why birthdays make me uncomfortable. Told him it was okay while he cried for lying during our acting class because I understood where he was coming from, feeling like there's a Version of yourself you have to put forward because it's what people expect,_ she thinks.

"We would find documentaries we thought the other one might like and watch them together because I actually felt like we helped each other grow as people. I know people always say that about relationships: 'find someone who makes you want to be better' and I thought they were full of shit, but Troy did that for me." Her eyes are watering more and she shakes her head.

Abed gives her a small but genuine smile. "That sounds nice." 

"I think we both just got in our own heads about things and called it quits before we could recover," Britta tells him softly. She closes her eyes for a moment, hesitant to continue. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner. Troy was worried about how you'd take it, and I was too, but I was also a little selfish. I knew you were the most important person in his life, and I never wanted to try and replace you, but I wanted to be important to him, too. I liked feeling like there were parts of himself that he only showed me."

"Britta, literally all you had to do was say, 'hey, Abed, Troy and I want to spend some time alone together.'"

"Abed, you pretended to not know about us for weeks just so I would keep bringing you guys donuts." 

"Touché," Abed admits. "That was selfish of me. And at first it was for the exact reason you just said. I didn't know what it would mean for the formula with you two getting together. Any of Troy's or my own love interests only lasted for an episode or two before it would just be the two of us again. Even when Annie joined us we had already gotten reached the point in the plot where I don't know if either of us would have become more than friends with her so that was never really an issue."

" But I could have thrown off the plot you'd been scripting," Britta replies, trying to maintain Abed's metaphor. "Abed, I'd like to think you'd give us more credit than that!"

" I wasn't sure if you would or not. In one timeline you just had casual sex until you both got bored of it and things went back to normal but in another Jeff got jealous because he felt like Troy was stealing the leading man role and with his ex-whatever you two were, on top of that." Abed goes quiet for a moment. "That timeline ended with Jeff and Troy getting in a big fight and they stopped talking to each other. You felt weird taking sides so you broke it off with Troy but ended up getting close to Jeff again because of that innate chemistry you two have. Annie stopped talking to you over that part. Shirley just stopped talking to all of us in general. She'd serve us if we went to her shop but other than that she iced us all out. It wasn't The Darkest Timeline, but it felt like it."

It's quiet again. Britta is floored and is having trouble finding anything to say. Eventually she just says, "shit," and Abed lets out a laugh that surprises them both.

"For what it's worth, the relationship that you two actually had was one of the better timelines."

"I think so, too," Britta tells him. Then, because Britta has always been a little curious and Abed's being unexpectedly vulnerable right now, she asks: "Did you love him?"

"You mean romantically?" Abed doesn't sound offended, the question is more of one genuinely asking for clarification.

"Yeah. I mean, I get it if you did, Troy's very lovable. You guys were just, _so_ close... I wondered sometimes." _Also, Troy was really into pegging,_ Britta thinks but doesn't say.

Abed thinks for a moment. "I think maybe I did at one point, right after we had moved in together. There was one night we were watching _Kickpuncher_ and I just could not get out of my own head from something that had happened earlier that day. I don't remember what it was now but I can remember Troy, without ever pausing the movie, getting up and going to the other room to grab a fidget toy for me so I would stop scratching at my wrists. He didn't say anything but he handed it to me and just went back to the movie and I don't know that I'd ever felt so _understood_ before.

"Maybe we could have been something but I was so happy with things as they were and having a roommate and best friend all in one. I had never had either and then I got to have both. I could never fully figure out if my feelings were romantic or platonic and I was afraid to push my luck and risk seeing if they were romantic in case it messed everything up. I used to think that was a very over-used trope and it definitely still is, but I understand it better now."

Britta makes a noise of agreement. "Feelings are scary and stupid. It'd've been easier if I hadn't caught them in the first place."

"Yeah, but would you have been as happy?"

"No," Britta admits, a note of petulance in her voice.

"Maybe I need to 'britta' my feelings more often," Abed speculates.

"Easy there, Cher," Britta tells him. "I haven't had the best track record feelings-wise. Maybe we should just both try for somewhere in the middle."

"Yeah, I got a little carried away. That'd make for an interesting story arc, though," and Britta laughs. They sit in the quiet for a few moments before Abed says, "I think I'm ready to go back upstairs."

"Sure thing," Britta replies and slides to her feet. She picks up her bag and watches Abed look down at the ground one more time before he nods with a note of finality. Abed walks over to her and they turn away from the scene.

"Thank you," Abed tells her as they walk up the stairs side by side.

"For what?"

"For listening without trying to therapize me," he says and Britta can't help but feel stung. Abed continues, "I'm sure Therapist!Britta would have done her best to help, but I liked talking to Friend!Britta more." The stinging immediately soothes over to an unexpected warmth.

"Thanks, Abed," Britta says. She reaches over to give his hand a gentle squeeze, which he returns. "You want to get dinner somewhere?"

"Sure. This was starting to feel Very Special Episode so the change in tone will be nice, and it's been a long time since we've had a story line together."

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I came up with the summary and liked how that sounded and went from there. I hope I didn't have Abed get too meta, but I felt like he might have a little regression after Troy left. 
> 
> I miss Britta and Abed's scenes together. Gillian's comment about Britta trying to 'emotionally replace' Troy got me missing them even more, so I gave them some extra love. Lemme know what you think!


End file.
